Building A Movement

Every year in Anaheim the Natural Foods Expo brings together all the major and upcoming health and wellness brands. The growth in the sector is amazing—there are acres and acres of established and new brands, all vying to meet the growing demand for healthy food.

There’s only one problem.

Most of the brands sell at price points decidedly higher than the conventional, unhealthy brands they are trying to unseat. So most of those products end up getting sold through affluent retailers (think Whole Foods) to affluent customers. In underserved communities, the products that are available are the same ones that got us into this health & obesity crisis.

Well, we think that’s not right. And we are not alone.

It all started when Hayden Slater, CEO of Pressed Juicery, a company that is committed to making healthy food affordable for all, agreed to sell us his juices at two prices. The first price is the regular price he would sell Pressed Juices. The second price, at a significant discount, was for all the Pressed Juices that we are able to sell in underserved communities. That way, not only is Pressed Juicery available in South LA and Baldwin Hills for the first time, but it’s at a discounted price so it’s affordable.

We didn’t know it at the time, but that was the beginning of a movement.

Since then, we’ve gone on to partner with 12 different brands, all of whom sell to us at two prices, so that we can sell their products in all our stores, and make sure they are affordable in all communities. So this blog post is a big thank you to our partners: